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Lincicome: In this Super show, NFL coaches go mild

Published February 1, 2007 at midnight

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MIAMI - It has not gone unnoticed that the two coaches of the Super Bowl teams are unlike others who have preceded them. Social pioneers they have been called, the first of their kind, stereotype breakers.

Having now been to 36 of these things, I do have a perspective on Super Bowl coaches, and I have to agree that I have seen no one like either Tony Dungy or Lovie Smith before.

They are - how best to put this? - they are coaches of a different tone than the usual, not meaning skin tone at all, which also has been mentioned, but tone as in noise, something soothing and more gentle, as in gentlemen, as in calm, as in composed.

"The vision of a successful coach," Dungy said, "was Vince Lombardi, a white, angry middle-aged man, spewing fire and brimstone. It made a great picture."

It certainly did. That gapped-tooth ogre in full rage spawned generations of imitators. His legend was the model; treat everyone the same, like dirt. After all, they named the Super Bowl trophy for Lombardi, did they not?

In the long list of successors, from Don Shula to Mike Ditka, from Jimmy Johnson to Bill Cowher, the pictures always caught them with wrath on their faces.

Even with the coldly dismissive Bill Belichick, the steely and remote Tom Landry, or the superficially tolerant Mike Shanahan, there is always that undercurrent of arrogance and superiority, men in charge, no doubt about it.

Not that Smith and Dungy do not have an air of command, because they do, but it is never overweening or harsh, and never at the top of their voices.

"Listen," Smith said, "I'm a husband, a father and a grandfather, so my voice has been raised a few times."

That's another strange thing about this. Even they deny their image as reasonable and fair-minded men.

"When I was a young athlete," Dungy said, "I got my share of technicals. Not everyone liked me."

The criticism of Dungy has long been that he is too nice to win the big one. His likability was such a handicap in Tampa that he was excused in favor of Jon Gruden, another of those scowlers, so much so that he usually is likened to Chucky, the demon doll.

Should either of these men have a toy made in their image, it would be by Disney, something softish, and if not cuddly, at least without sharp corners.

"There has never been this blueprint for a coach before," Dungy said, "someone of our personality and value system, with a different way of expressing ourselves. What we have proved is that anything can work, if you just get the right person."

Smith is, of course, following in the wake of Ditka, still echoing all these years later down Michigan Avenue.

In Chicago, to go from Iron Mike to someone named Lovie takes some adjusting. Real Bears fans are like the ones in the TV skit - crude, barely articulate, Da Fanz of Da Bearz, just a bunch of, to use Ditka's term, Grabowskis.

Ozzie Guillen, who won the World Series with the White Sox, better fits what Chicago thinks of itself than does Smith - feisty, brawling, taking no guff. It has always been a city with its fists up.

Niceness ought not to be an insult, but it does lend itself to distrust. As Smith stuck with quarterback Rex Grossman through thin and thick, his reassurances reassured the public not at all. Careful and calm explanations do not have the same force as, "Because I said so," or "He's my quarterback. Period."

All that can justify the methods of Dungy and Smith is ultimate victory, and even winning comes with disclaimers. Winning is not the only thing, as it was to Lombardi and his heirs.

It was the highly strung George Allen who claimed that losing was like death.

"This isn't life or death," Dungy said. "It's our job."

"We know our place in the big picture," Smith said. "We're a very small part of it. Neither of us wears pads. The game will come down to the players."

Do not believe for a moment that either man cares less than the tyrants of yore, or that losing does not really matter. Or that he is unaware of what each represents beyond mere sport.

They really are in the minority, these men, not sideline-stomping autocrats as much as considerate leaders, and when one of them loses the Super Bowl, the likely conclusion will be that he lost not because of his race but because he was too nice.

That's progress.